Dying Embers
by Cold Ember
Summary: He really wishes he hadn't survived. Follow up to Slow Burn 2nd in series . Oneshot.


A/N: This is a follow up to my story _Slow Burn_. You're really going to want to read that first, otherwise you'll probably be a bit confused. There's (at least) one more fic in the series after this, which I'll post soon.

Warning: Dark. Very, very dark. This series is some of the darkest stuff I've ever written (and it gets darker as it goes on).

Also, as always, I don't own NUMB3RS, yadda yadda, and big thanks to pruehall over on LJ for the beta.

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Dying Embers

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He was only half a second too slow. Only a half a second too apathetic to be as aware of his surroundings as he should have been.

A half a second too late to avoid the bullet that slammed into his chest, but not too slow to squeeze off a round of his own before he collapsed.

He could hear and feel his teammates around him, one of them pressing their hands into his chest, screaming at him to stay with them and to fight, calling his name, trying to pull him back to them.

But he didn't have any fight left in him, not anymore, not for a long time. He was all out of willpower, and he didn't have thing left to give. He'd put everything he had into pretending that he was alright for too long and he was exhausted and ready to give up, to give into his pain.

There was a time when just hearing the voices of his teammates would have made him summon energy that he didn't have to fight to live, but that time was long gone now. He knew that hanging onto to the sound of David's panicked voice of that freighter was what had pulled him through, but now hearing David begging him not to give up, not to die, he only felt a small twinge of guilt for what he was about to put his team through. They would have no idea how much a relief this was to him; they would all think that he had died in the prime of his life, with so much living left to do.

They'd never know that he hadn't actually been living for some time.

Not only did he not care if he died, he actually welcomed death; it was an escape from the hell that he'd been living in for years now. He _wanted_ to die. And dying now meant that he didn't have to worry about pulling anyone else down with him anymore.

He was already dead, this was just the final piece of him leaving, and so when the darkness pulled him down into complete oblivion, at long last, he embraced it willingly.

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An irritating and persistent high pitched beeping pulled him back up from the darkness sometime later and it was with a heavy heart that he realized he was in a hospital.

He wasn't dead.

The next thing that permeated his consciousness was David's voice, speaking softly to him and Colby could feel David's grip on his hand, strong and tight.

He really wished that David didn't care so much. He knew that his death – which was going to happen, most likely soon rather than later – would hurt his friend deeply, but not even that could save him now. At one point just knowing that there were people who cared if he lived or died had been enough to keep him alive and sane, but that was only enough for so long. His head was a mess, and he was borderline suicidal – most likely falling on the wrong side of that borderline.

He heard Don's voice now, in addition to David's and he knew that they had become aware of his renewed consciousness because they were coaxing him to open his eyes and he heard a woman – whom he could only assume was a nurse – say something about getting a doctor.

All he wanted was to be left alone, left to drown in his misery and die. He wanted to be left alone so that he didn't have to pretend that he was okay. He just wanted them to go away and to sink back into blissful nothingness.

There was no point in it anymore, in anything. He was shattered, broken beyond any hope of repair. He wishes that people would stop trying to glue him back together because when they do he has to hold all the pieces in place and pretend that he wasn't going to fall apart completely if someone breathed on him.

He was sick of pretending, of lying, of being someone, something that he wasn't. He'd thought that had ended when Lancer had died, but clearly it hadn't. It had only gotten worse.

Maybe he should take up the CIA on their standing offer. At least then he could feel like he was achieving something with his mask instead of just letting himself rot away inside.

Norman Bates' mother was more alive than he was.

He'd tried everything to wake himself up. Everything. Throwing himself into dangerous situations one after another at work hadn't worked and it had only drawn unwanted attention. Attention that wasn't actually unwanted, attention that could have made someone take notice and help him… give him help that he was too proud to admit he needed.

He'd done the most dangerous and advanced skydives he could find, tried bungee jumping, he'd bought a motorcycle and he took it out to the county and played chicken with cars on lonely country highways, took hairpin turns at breakneck speeds. All just to try to make himself feel something, anything. Fear, happiness, any emotion would do. Any emotion that would prove to him that he really was still alive. He just wanted to _feel_ again.

He never did.

He really wishes that he hadn't survived.

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End file.
